Crossed Bones Read online

  He didn't answer for at least a full minute. “I believed what I wrote back then. I believed that everyone who wasn't white was inferior. That violence and laziness and a welfare-state-of-mind were innate characteristics of everyone except whites.” His blue gaze was electric and strong. “I was wrong.”

  “I heard your rap songs. You were terrible.” There was no nice way to say a man had no talent.

  “I was,” he agreed.

  “What happened?”

  “I met Ivory and he taught me how to play a guitar. Really play and understand that to get the most out of a musical instrument, you have to make love to it. You have to touch it, and stroke it, and arouse it, just like a woman.”

  I swallowed hard. The images he created were hard to ignore. I forced myself to continue. “So that was it? A little private tutoring from Ivory and you become this virtuoso?”

  “It wasn't that easy.” He stepped a little closer, and for the first time he really smiled at me. “You doubt that a great teacher and a lot of practice could change me?” His smile faded, and a dark light touched his eyes. “You've heard that I sold my soul to the devil, haven't you? That's what you're really asking about.”

  I wanted to deny it, but I couldn't. It sounded foolish, but so did a crash course in talent. Most musicians spent years becoming masters of an instrument. “You got a lot of talent mighty quick. How'd the rumor get started?” I didn't really believe Scott had met the devil at a crossroads and traded his soul, but there were a lot of ways of trading with the devil, or so I'd learned.

  “I told Ivory that was a bad idea,” he said softly. “But he was set on it. He said the rumor that a white boy had met Satan at the crossroads would put me in all the magazines.” He exhaled. “And he was right. In many ways, Ivory was a genius.”

  “So you didn't sell your soul?”

  “You want a flat confirmation or denial, don't you?” He was amused at me, yet the strange dark light lingered in his gaze. “I won't answer that outright, but I will tell you that I've paid a heavy price for my career. While you're pondering my pact with the devil, think about what you might give up to achieve your dream.”

  For a split second, he sounded like Jitty, and I wanted no conversation about my dreams or my sacrifices. “How did you learn to play so well so fast?” I pressed.

  “It wasn't just that I learned to play the guitar. I became a different person. Scott the rapper died, and Scott the bluesman was born. It's that simple and that difficult. But once you let go of everything that defines you as a person—all the beliefs that hold you in place like a fly in a spider's web—anything is possible.”

  I considered a few choruses of a Buddhist chant I'd learned in New York, but I restrained myself. If Scott was shooting me a line of crap, he seemed to believe it totally. There was energy and passion in his face. If his soul hadn't been transformed, his features surely had, just by remembering it.

  “That's what Ivory taught me. Sure, he taught me how to touch my guitar, how to whisper to her, and slide my fingers so light on her strings that she sighs.”

  As he talked, his hands moved involuntarily in the motion. His long fingers seemed to tremble with anticipation. I found it extremely difficult to breathe, and I put my hands around the bars of the cell for support.

  “Ivory taught me all of that, but the most important thing was how to leave my old, pitiful self behind. That's why I'm telling you I used to be a racist. I believed what I wrote. But I honestly don't feel that way anymore. Now, those songs shame me.”

  “How did you and Ivory meet?” I'd heard a summarized version, but I wanted the whole story. Once again, in Scott's presence, I had begun to believe in his innocence.

  “The Bonesmen had a prison band. Heavy metal is a kind way to describe it. It was the band that did all of the prison shows, and because of that, we had special privileges.”

  “Were Spider and Ray-Ban in the band?”

  “They were backstage hands. Moving the speakers and such. They never played music. What happened was that Ivory had started a blues band. They were a whole lot better than us, and so the warden picked them to play one of the events. That was the wrong thing to do, to put a black blues band in the place of a white band. Especially a white band composed of members of an Aryan Brotherhood.”

  “The Bonesmen couldn't go after the warden, so they went after Ivory.”

  “Right. Four of them caught Ivory out in the exercise yard one morning. They dragged him back behind the laundry. They were going to sever the tendons in his left hand. Cripple him so he couldn't play.”

  “Were Ray-Ban and Spider part of this?”

  He shook his head. “No, it was some other guys, but Spider and Ray-Ban knew it was coming down.”

  “I heard you intervened. Why?”

  Scott took his time answering. “I'd heard Ivory play. He was better than good. He was great. He had a real talent, not like the guys in our band. I guess I just couldn't let them destroy such talent.”

  I could finally breathe easily again. “So you and Ivory became friends.”

  “Not friends. Not at first. He felt he owed me something, and he was determined to pay me back. He'd heard our band, too, and he didn't think much of our music or my playing, but he said he saw something in me. He said there was a chance I could be great.”

  “And he was right,” I said. I hadn't intended to pay Scott a compliment. It just slipped out. He was a major talent, no matter what else could be said about him.

  “Thank you, Miss Delaney. I didn't realize you were a fan of the blues.”

  “All my life.” But I didn't want to talk about me, or music. Talking about music with Scott was dangerous. He made me feel too much. “We still have to resolve the problem of your two friends. I can see there's a bond between y'all, but they need to be controlled.”

  Scott shook his head. “They saved my life the same way I saved Ivory. That's one thing that old man and I had in common. We both admired loyalty. He understood why I couldn't just turn my back on the men who'd befriended me when I first went to prison. Even though they were part of an organization of men who would have crippled him, he understood that I owed them. And he had the same problem with his black friends when it became apparent we were growing close.”

  “You don't have to dump them as friends; you just have to get them out of town,” I pointed out.

  “They won't hang around here long. They'll grow tired of their games and head out when the beer runs out and it looks like they need to work. Just let them do it on their own time.”

  I didn't really have another option. Spider and Ray-Ban weren't going to take orders from me, that was a dead-certain fact.

  The storm that Jitty had predicted was massed to the east. It hung over the horizon, a line of thick black clouds that moved swiftly toward the west. The sky beneath the clouds was a pale gray with a hint of yellow. Sailors and landlubbers alike would take warning from this storm. Tiny wisps of cloud hung down in several places, suggesting the potential for a twister.

  I drove home and put the roadster in the shed. Reveler was eager to get in his stall and eat, and Sweetie barked from the porch, a reminder that she, too, wanted some chow and attention, in that order.

  I went in the back door, expecting to find Jitty at the kitchen table. Instead, the house was deathly quiet. I hadn't felt so alone in Dahlia House since the weeks after my parents' deaths. I stood by the table and listened to the loud ticking of the kitchen clock. A wind gust kicked up outside and sent a tree branch clawing at the screen. Though I knew what it was, I jumped anyway.

  “Jitty,” I said, and to my shame I was whispering. “Jitty!”

  I pushed through the swinging door, crossed the dining room, and went to the parlor. There was no sign of my ghost. Whatever Jitty was up to, she wasn't available to me. I would be left on my own to figure out my reaction to Scott and my overreaction to Coleman, who'd been absent from the sheriff's office when I left the jail. He'd been gone, but Bo-Pee
p had been there. She was quick to let me know that Coleman had taken the afternoon off. He and Connie had gone up to Moon Lake to spend the night.

  To heck with Coleman and his marital problems. I had a date to get ready for. I trotted up the stairs, ran a bath, and went to the closet.

  Based on the prerequisites that Bridge had set, I selected a pair of peach capri slacks and a peach and white checked bodice top. I had the perfect pair of sandals to wear with it.

  The whole time I was getting ready, I kept looking over my shoulder for Jitty. A date was a big occasion for her to boss me around. It was strange that she didn't put in an appearance.

  Just as I finished applying my Peach Perfection lipstick, a loud crack of thunder was followed by a terrific flash of lightning.

  Dahlia House was plunged into darkness.

  12

  Jitty—had she been around to comment—would have said that getting dressed in the dark was one of my major talents. But she wasn't around, and I managed to ready myself for a romantic evening without the high-voltage companionship of Reddy Kilowatt or Jitty.

  I was still wondering where Jitty had gone when the power came back on and Bridge arrived to whisk me to Zinnia. Though his main office was in Memphis, he'd rented an antebellum town house only a few blocks from Cece.

  The residential section of Zinnia was not as old as estates like Dahlia House. This section of town had been developed for the merchant class, those men who made their living in commerce rather than on the land. The house Bridge had settled into was designed for lawn parties and entertainment. The exterior was all gracious Southern charm. Inside was a big surprise. Bridge had transformed the front parlor into a temporary Bedouin chamber. Pillows littered the floor, and candles glowed through layers of gauzy hangings, creating soft and intimate illumination.

  I stopped in the foyer and simply stared. It had been a long, long time since a man had gone to this much trouble for me. “Wow.” My statement was totally inadequate.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Bridge said, dropping to one knee. He took my hands in his. “Do you trust me?”

  “In what regard?” I wasn't exactly comfortable looking down at him.

  “Close your eyes, Sarah Booth,” he urged.

  My Aunt LouLane always cautioned me that curiosity killed the cat. I was dying to know what Bridge was up to. I closed my eyes and felt his fingers at the straps of my sandals. In less than a minute I was barefoot and reclining in the middle of a sumptuous pillow while he'd gone to make drinks.

  “I decided to forgo the goatskin filled with fermented grapes,” he said, handing me a crystal martini glass. “I was more in the mood for cosmopolitans.”

  The pink drink was just fine with me. Jack Daniel's was normally my party companion, but I could shake up my habits when an opportunity presented itself.

  Bridge had prepared—or had had prepared—a cold dinner of boiled and peeled shrimp, fruit, and crusty French bread. We nibbled and talked. Bridge had graduated from Ole Miss four years before I started. He and Oscar had been in the same classes, the same fraternity, the same social order.

  I had a moment of concern, but it passed. Bridge obviously knew nothing of my college capers. He'd gone on to Harvard to pursue his master's by the time I arrived at Ole Miss. There were others who'd known me when I'd rejected sorority life, protested against the unfair double standards of class and gender, thrown in with the unorthodox theatre crowd, and generally disavowed my heritage and birthright.

  Bridge might run into some of my old alumni, but I doubted they'd think to talk about me. Tinkie was the only friend Bridge and I shared in common, and Tinkie would never spill the beans. I certainly wasn't in a confessional mood, so I simply let him think we shared the same view of our college days—golden and fraught with unlimited earning potential.

  We finished the shrimp, and Bridge cleared the food and dishes away. He made us fresh drinks, and when he settled onto the pillow beside me, I figured it was time to fish or cut bait. He was interested in me. Very interested. And I was at war with myself.

  As if Jitty were sitting on my shoulder tweaking my libido, I felt the urge to shift a little closer to this man, to brush my calf across his shin, to let my fingers slide over his ribs on the way to holding his hand. These were all tiny gestures that gave a man the idea that he could take the next step without fear of being slapped. A very large part of me wanted Bridge to take the next step.

  He was an eligible man, and I did desire him. He had wealth, good looks, social position, refinement, education, and a sense of humor. If his clothes weren't so obviously Italian, I would have suspected that he made them himself. In other words, he was perfect.

  There were complications, though.

  Tinkie's words danced in my mind. Bridge wasn't a man who liked an easy acquisition. He appreciated the game, the struggle, the challenge. An easy victory would eventually lead to boredom.

  The idea that a man might grow bored with me was scalding. But that wasn't what was holding me back.

  Coleman was the fly in the ointment. Ineligible, poorly paid, working in dangerous conditions, and married. This was the man who stood between me and “marrying up.”

  “What's on your mind, Sarah Booth?” Bridge asked. He leaned back on his elbows in the pillows, effectively relaxing and putting a little distance between us.

  “I have a lot on my mind,” I answered, which wasn't a lie.

  “Scott Hampton?”

  It was a logical assumption on Bridge's part. “When I'm talking to Scott, I believe completely that he's innocent. When I'm away from him and I think about the evidence, I have doubts.” It was much easier to talk about Scott than it was about me.

  “He's very charismatic. I bought some of his CDs yesterday. Shall I put them on?”

  “Sure.”

  Bridge rose and started the music, mixing fresh drinks while he was up. When he settled back into the pillows, he offered his arm for me to lean against. “No pressure,” he said. “I don't like pressure, and I suspect you don't either.”

  Add perceptive to his list of dazzling qualities. I shifted and leaned back against him, knowing that he was a gentleman. I sighed with pleasure.

  “That's a girl,” he said. “Relax. We'll never get to know each other if you feel on guard all the time.”

  I snuggled deeper into the pillow, and Bridge, and listened to Scott Hampton's wailing guitar take over the room. I thought I might be able to lounge back and enjoy the evening. But blues aren't the proper music for casual lounging. The blues get in the blood and move around the body. Pretty soon, the body's moving around, too. I didn't want that to happen, so I took a candle over to Bridge's music collection, which covered three shelves of a big bookcase. “You have everyone,” I said, my finger tracing down the spines.

  “About ten years ago I bought this map of Mississippi and it had the places marked where every blues musician in the state was born. I started collecting from there. Mississippi has produced some remarkable artists.”

  I sat cross-legged on the floor and let my index finger slide over the plastic covers. Tick-tick-tick-tick, all the way as far as I could reach. He had a vast collection. “Pinebox Simpson! My mother had an album of his.”

  “They redigitalized it and put it on CD. Better sound.”

  I slipped out a Wailin' Betty CD. One of the guest vocalists was Big Dumplin' Blues Mama. I'd caught her act in a seedy bar in New Orleans some ten years before. She was hot!

  I felt Bridge ease down beside me. His fingers slid up my bare arm, resting on my shoulder. It was a gesture that could be taken as friendly, or something more. He was leaving it all up to me.

  “Do you have anything with Ivory in it?” I asked.

  “I have everything he's done,” Bridge said, leaning forward so that his chest came against my shoulder. A very solid chest, I might add.

  He pulled out a CD and put it on. As soon as the music started, there was no doubt the man on the piano was a master.
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  “Who's he playing with?” The lead guitar was good, but it wasn't Scott “The Blizzard” Hampton.

  “Band called Mad Dog Blues. That was the band he was playing in before he went to prison.”

  “How come you know so much about Ivory?” I asked him, suddenly curious.

  “I know about all of the Mississippi blues artists,” he said. “But Ivory is local, and he was still very much alive and performing until recently. I took a special interest in him because I could see him perform live.”

  “Did you ever go to his club?”

  “A couple of times,” he said. “I haven't been home that much in recent years. I regret that.”

  “Ivory served time for murder.” I let the statement hang out there.

  “He did. I heard the story from a reliable source, but I never talked to him about it.”

  “Will you tell me what you know?”

  “Of course.” He glanced at my drink to make sure I wasn't running dry. “Ivory was a handsome man, by anyone's standards. He was tall and lean, with a neatly trimmed mustache. And he was a ladies' man. As you know, it's part of the blues.”

  I understood this on one level. The life of musicians, particularly the bluesmen of the past, was one of travel, long weeks on the road, and an abundance of easy women.

  “Ivory made his living traveling around to nightclubs, playing music that made the folks listening want to abandon themselves to sin and pleasure.” He shrugged. “Pain and death are always just around the corner, so better take pleasure where you can. That's the motto of the blues, Sarah Booth. Ivory played them with all his heart. He lived them, too.”

  I nodded. Temptation, for an average man or woman, is hard to resist. But give a person fame and charisma, put them on a stage performing down and dirty music, have the women in the room calling out invitations for sex and fun, and trouble is hovering in the air.

  “It still doesn't make cheating on his wife right,” I said, wondering how Ida Mae had finally put all this behind her.

  “It doesn't,” Bridge agreed. His hand swept under my hair, lifting it off my neck so that the air-conditioned breeze touched off a racy little chill. “Nothing makes cheating right. But I think you have to concede that a certain lifestyle leads one into temptation easier than another. A musician has a hundred chances to stray each time he plays live. That's a lot of temptation to resist.”